


Piece By Piece

by likeabomb



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Childhood Trauma, F/M, Recovery, Surreal, Telepathic Bond, Telepathy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26307436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeabomb/pseuds/likeabomb
Summary: After a rough training session, Jean and Scott take time in his mindscape. One slip, and Jean begins to understand just how deeply Scott's scars run.
Relationships: Jean Grey/Scott Summers
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26





	Piece By Piece

_ “Scott! Easy now, lean on me. You’re alright.” _

Hank feels solid against him, and it’s enough to help ground him when his head spins. He reaches with his hands blindly, “Wha-”

“Danger Room, end sequence!” Bobby’s voice rings out and there’s a twinge of alarm that makes Scott feel sick. Sicker than whatever happened makes him feel.

“You really took that one hard, Scott. Why did you just stand there?” Jean’s voice asks from the side and Scott shakes his head as though it might help. It doesn’t.

The way the visor distorts his vision, the deep shades of red he’s forced to see the world in, how it limits his peripherals, how colors- the color- runs together sometimes… It doesn’t make the dizziness any easier, and closing his eyes doesn’t really help the physical sensation.   
  
“Jean, I need you to listen carefully. I’m unsure if Scott has suffered a head injury or not. He may very well have a concussion. I need you to take him to his room and keep an eye on him.” The Professor’s voice crackles through the speakers of the Danger Room from the observation deck on high. The static edge to it is enough to make Scott wince.   
  
Hank shifts and scoops him up before he realizes what’s happening, and he wonders if he  _ does _ have a concussion. Headache, the smears across his vision, the bone deep fatigue- it’s likely. He hopes it’s minor, if it is a concussion at all and not just his body reeling from taking the brunt of a hard light projection to the face.

In the time it takes to contemplate it, he’s been taken from the Danger Room to his own room upstairs and settled on his bed. Jean sits down on the bed next to him, he can feel her weight dip against the springs.   
  
“Thanks for the assist, Hank. I’ll keep an eye on him.”   
  
“Of course, Jean. If there’s a problem, if he’s feeling unwell, do let me know. I know a thing or two that might help make things easier on him.”   
  
When Scott unglues his tongue from the roof of his mouth, “Thanks Hank,” he doesn’t realize immediately that Hank isn’t answering because Hank isn’t in the room. So instead, he tries, “Jean?”

“I’m right here, Scott.”   
  
Relief floods through him despite him being entirely aware she’s sitting on the bed beside him and hasn’t moved.   
  
“How are you feeling?” Her voice comes again, and it’s from the same side, but a different angle, and Scott can’t quite make out much of anything through his visor right now, and instead opts to close his eyes and try to sink into the cool covers under him, smoothed pin straight on his bed.   
  
“Vision blurry, head hurts- what happened in there?” Scott turns his face to her direction, even though he keeps his eyes closed. It’s a habit he’s formed, turning his face towards who he’s speaking to regardless of whether or not his eyes are open so they have the benefit of a face to face conversation.

“I’m not entirely sure. You’ve been awfully distracted, especially this morning, and you froze. We tried to call, to warn you, but you didn’t seem to hear us,” Jean explains, pushing thick curls back from his forehead to feel his head.   
  
“I… didn’t, no. I didn’t hear you.”

“What is on your mind that could be so loud as to drown out  _ training _ . You love training.” He can hear the smile tugging at her lips, pulling her words. She’s always been quick to tease him for how hard and how often he pushes himself to train.

Scott shifts a little more, snapping his fingers once, then digging his fingernails into the soft meat of his palms. He takes a breath before trying, “It’s… nothing, Jean. I’m fine. I’ll do better next time.”

Jean’s hand on his forehead moves and both her hands cup his face. He feels her thumbs brush just under the edge of his visor and he wishes he could take it off, that he could look at her in the dim light of the lamp. He turns his face into her hands and wishes he didn’t feel the hot sting in his eyes.   
  
“Is… is it alright if I join you inside your mind, Scott?”   
  
She doesn’t scold him like he knows she wants to. He knows she hates when he brushes off his own feelings, when he straps himself into his convictions. Convictions that really aren’t even his to begin with, but have slowly become his. Have become all of theirs.

Nodding slowly, Scott revels in the feeling of her hands on his face still, trying to relax himself so she’ll have an easier time easing herself into his mind. Jean has mentioned when he’s tense, it’s more difficult for her- it feels too tight. He breathes slowly and she hums gently, “That’s it. Nice and easy.”   
  
Scott knows this is still fairly new to Jean, that her telepathy developed after her telekinesis, and that she’s been working hard with the Professor on how to keep her powers under control, and keep her mind to herself. She’s not exactly great at not being nosy though, and the rest of the house regularly has to scold her for it. Scott doesn’t  _ like _ it, but he understands it can’t be easy, in a way his mind simply can’t rationalize the struggle properly without being able to actually do what she does.

It starts with a spark between them. Sometimes it’s the way they lean their foreheads together. Sometimes it’s the way her hand clutches his own. Today it’s the static glide of her thumbs caressing his cheeks.   
  
His mindscape is something that amuses both the Professor and Jean, but it feels right to him, and he doesn’t know how to change it, let alone would he be willing to. It works, and that’s all he needs.   
  
Jean leads him up the stone steps, pushing the door open for the two of them to duck inside. It’s cooler inside than it is outside. Stone and brick lead into glossy wood and walls lined with books. There are maps pinned to the walls, display cases with velvet ropes sectioning them off, holding important treasures, tables set in the middle of the room downstairs with desk lamps. A great grand window on the far wall brings natural light into the room, casting gentle shadow through the bookcases lined up.

From the balcony that surrounds the entire top floor, leaving the library open air and feeling spacious, someone closes a book with a snap, leaning on the railing to look down at them.   
  
Scott stares up at himself, looking taller, looking… fierce, in a way. This one has always made his stomach tight. The way this one looks at him, even with eyes obscured, makes him drop his own gaze. Jean’s hand squeezes his gently.

“Good morning, you two,” another Scott chimes from the front desk, carefully closing a crisp agenda and setting his pen aside, “What can I do for you? Were you looking for something?”   
  
“Nothing in particular today Scott, but thank you!” Jean smiles graciously, and receives a nod in return before this one goes back to his agenda at the desk.

Pulling him along, Scott can’t help reaching while they walk and wander, to run fingers over the books that line the shelves. These are all his memories. The library is small now, but it has room for expansion and growth as he gets older, as he accrues more experience, as he learns new skills. Organized and tidy, in an order that makes sense. He knows from experience that talking with the Scott at the front desk has a tendency to rearrange the shelves, but not in a way that doesn’t always still make sense. Sometimes it’s chronological, sometimes it’s by theme, sometimes it’s by person. Everything, though, always ends up making sense.   


It has to.

They pass by a few other Scotts, all reading from books on the shelves, or sitting and studying. One though, that Jean always makes a point to stop and visit, settles himself in a plush chair upstairs against the far wall where the warm stone from the sun outside puts him at ease.   
  
He’s ten, and he’s always reading. About planes, or the military, about baking or about identifying wild plants- he loves to learn! Eager to read any book he can get his hands on, he always seems content in this little corner of the library.   
  
He is the only Scott in the library who doesn’t wear some form of glasses or visor.

In this mindscape, there isn’t a reason that any of them should have to, but this Scott is the only one who is from a point in time that he hadn’t needed to.   
  
Today he’s reading about marine animals, and there’s a bandage around his head, speckled with blood.   
  
Scott doesn’t approach, and Jean slowly lets go of his hand so that she can. She won’t force him to. She crouches next to the young Scott and when he realizes it’s her, he smiles wide but doesn’t close his book.   
  
“Jean! Hello, Miss Jean.”   
  
Smiling for him, she crouches beside his chair, “Well hello, Scott. It’s good to see you today. How are you feeling?”   
  
“I’m fine today, Jean,” he hums, and Scott has to pull his eyes away from the bandages, teeth grinding a little. Instead he watches off the balcony to the rest of the library.   
  
“What are you reading about?” She asks him quietly, tilting her head to look at the book he has in his lap.   
  
“Marine biology! My dad took Alex and I to the Sealife Center and we saw sea lions and seals and puffins and eels and- it was so cool, Miss Jean!”   
  
Scott knows that while his younger construct talks to her in quiet but excited tones about the differences between sea lions and seals, Jean’s hand curves against his head and draws him in for a little kiss to his temple. The bandages fall away as if they’d never been there to begin with.   
  
She always takes care of him and with a warmth blossoms in his chest, Scott has a feeling she always will.

“Scott,” Jean’s voice comes to him, barely a whisper, but there’s something there that makes him look at her quickly.    
  
She stares off across the other side of the balcony and he follows her eyes until he sees what it is that she’s looking at.   
  
He stands with broad shoulders and a strong square jaw, hair short and shaped clean. The red glasses settled on his nose are distinctly Scott. He isn’t anything like the others. He’s strong, stern, like he could handle anything. All the others have the same wide shoulders, but not as sturdy. Where they’re more lithe and long, living up to the nickname of Slim, this Scott… he’s different, and the differences are enough they take Jean’s breath away.   
  
The two of them stare across for a long moment before Scott startles, “That-”   
  
“Scott, who is that?” Jean presses, and before he can answer her, she’s pulling herself around the nearest pole to head around the loop of the upper floor after this Scott she doesn’t recognize.   
  
As soon as he sees Jean coming his way, he takes off deeper into the library. Scott reaches a hand for her, panic lacing through him in a way that rattles the shelves, “Jean, wait!”   
  
She doesn’t listen though, and when the other takes off, Jean breaks into a run after him.   
  
He isn’t really sure what she’s thinking, running after him like that. He doesn’t know if she thinks he’s an intruder in Scott’s mind, but he can’t imagine she could think he was anything else. Surely she could just force the issue, bring him to her with a wave of her hand, but she’s seen something Scott’s mind simply doesn’t want her to see, and as he runs, it’s the same as his mind trying to bury the thought before she can reach it.   
  
She does though, because she’s gotten good at what she does. If Scott was entirely unwilling, they wouldn’t be giving chase at all, but there’s a reluctance to showing who this person is, and the chase is only some surreal metaphor, his mind supplying the best analogies it can for situations he just isn’t versed enough to understand in the full scope they need.

Before Jean has a chance to catch up, and she nearly does before he ducks down a hallway, she’s tackled from the side by something else. Someone else.

Scott skids to a stop and his heart leaps to his throat, choking him. His lungs burn and his heart slams, and he stares, because he’s too scared to do anything else.

Disoriented, Jean pushes the person away with a hard jerk of her telekinesis. With a hard sound, he hits the railings, the wind knocked out of him. She sits on the floor, still, and stares now too.

He’s burned. There’s mottled layers of burns all over his hands and face and up his arms. Big long slices carve him open. He stares back, looking like he might cry, and Scott himself isn’t sure if it’s because he’s afraid, if he’s upset, if he’s hurt- he doesn’t know. He doesn’t have the glasses most of them wear. He’s young. Not much older than the Scott they’d seen so excitedly reading a book about sea lions. 

“Scott,” she says gently, and he doesn’t know who she’s addressing anymore.

Jean stares in disbelief at what she sees, and there’s a sorrow in her eyes. The last Scott she’d been chasing is long gone, and the deeper they dive, the farther they wander through the empty halls, the more dark corners they find. It’s a place that’s meant to be full to bursting with life and knowledge, and this part of the library is silent, echoing, and barren. This isn’t one he wanted to come to light, but in the pursuit of the other, Scott supposes his mind is racing, twisting, trying to cope and throwing up walls and excuses and doubling over on itself in the process.

“What happened?”

“Survivor’s guilt,” Scott offers, staring at himself, broken, burned and bleeding sluggishly. It all looks the same through his visor, but he knows this Scott all too well.

“You…”   
  
“I survived and they didn’t.”

“You know what this is and it’s- he’s still here? You’ve manifested him into being, Scott,” Jean looks from the construct finally, up at him, and he offers a hand out to her.

The Scott cowering on the floor gets up and takes off down one of the hallways, but where he hit the railing and sat on the floor, there are streaks of drying blood.

“And the other one?” Jean presses, taking a step closer to look at him.

“It’s… it’s not important, Jean.” He waves it off, but he knows her, and though she didn’t needle him earlier for brushing off his own issues, she does this time, and he sees it in her face before she actually opens her mouth.   
  
“It’s not nothing, Scott. You’ve manifested entire beings, fragments of yourself, and sequestered off your trauma into… This is bad, Scott. This is not the way to deal with the things that have happened to you.”

Scott squirms where he stands, reaching to rub the back of his neck. His stomach roils, and realistically, he knows she’s right, but he does his best to cope with the things that have happened, and he doesn’t know what to do to address this kind of thing properly. At least not without calling attention to them, and himself, and the hell he’s been through already. It never seems like it’s worth it- there’s always something bigger, or someone else’s problems to help with.

“You are worth just as much love and care and time as everyone else in this world, Scott Summers,” Jean assures, setting her hand on his arm to squeeze gently, and he wonders if she just knows how to reassure him, or the thoughts racing through his mind about his own insecurities are reaching her. They  _ are _ in his mind after all.

Swallowing hard, he turns and looks at where they’ve run to. It’s not somewhere he comes often. The walls look the same, the halls look the same, and they’re all bare. White brick walls, white tile floor. There’s no paintings, there’s no rugs, and there’s no direction that might indicate how deep they’ve come, or the way back out. In the center of it all, though, is a deep and hollow cavern. The halls with the railings sit against an open space that echoes down floors and floors, stories and stories, and the entire thing is empty.

To Scott, it’s always been an opportunity to fill his mind with life experience and knowledge, a vast atrium waiting, all the space he could ever need right here. But he knows it’s not true. Not entirely.

He buries all his worries and fears and insecurities as deep as he can manage, and hopes with everything he has that they don’t find their way out of the labyrinth to the surface where he has to face them. If he adds stories and layers and winding, twisting hallways, maybe he won’t have to see them, and the horrors they bring with them.

And now he feels guilty. He feels bad that he didn’t address these in a healthy manner. But he was scared to, and he was reluctant to. He was an older brother, and made the leader of the team. It means he is the one responsible, and the one who needs to keep himself together for the sake of the others.

It means that when he looks down into this yawning void, darkness pulling, trying to claw itself into the light, suffocating as it climbs, he’s forced to confront the fact that there is far too much of himself that’s  _ broken _ .

“This is why you were distracted during training.”   
  
Scott looks to her, standing beside him, looking down into the well of darkness all those floors down. She isn’t afraid of it like he is.

“You’ve been holding all this in, pushing it all down, compartmentalizing it so it won’t get in the way, and not  _ dealing  _ with anything.”

Her tone isn’t  _ scolding _ , but she doesn’t sound happy.

“How am I supposed to, Jean?” Scott asks quietly, brow pinched tight enough he can feel it trying to spark a headache.

She finally looks at him, and not the abyss, and her expression softens, “Scott, I know you’ve faced down a lot of things in your life, and had a lot of bad things happen to you. I wish I could take those away. But you have people to rely on now, who aren’t going to hurt you or leave you, consciously or otherwise. You have me, and Bobby, and Warren, and Hank. And you have the Professor, too.”

The squeak of a wheelchair has her looking over his shoulder.

At the corner of the hallway, Scott sits in the Professor’s wheelchair, the blanket pulled over his legs. His hands move from the pushrims to his lap and he watches them quietly.

Jean watches him for a long few moments before she looks at Scott again, this Scott, the one she came down here with, and reaches to cup his jaw, voice soft but stern, “Hey, look at me.”   
  
It’s hard to tear his eyes away from the version of himself that came around the corner, but he does, and after a moment, he hears the squeak of the wheels disappear back down the hallway.

“There is a lot of things we could talk about, Scott, but above everything else, I need you to remember that you’re not bad or wrong for all of this. It was hard, and it’s not going to magically fix itself with a snap of  _ either _ of our fingers. And that’s alright too.”   
  
He leans into her hand and his nostrils flare as he wrestles with the urge to cry- like waves crashing against a craggy shore.

Scott’s hand snaps to hers quickly, holding it in place like he’s desperate for her to stay, and he is, and she knows. He hates being so vulnerable and so-

“You are not broken, Scott. I promise.”   
  
Jamming his eyes shut, his eyes burn and he knows that as hard as he fights tears on the outside, he can cry here, because even if he stands here and struggles not to cry, it’s all in his head. None of this is real. He could cry and it won’t cause the cataclysmic things he worries about. He could even take his visor off and see the colors, rich in his mind.

One step at a time, though, the tears come but the visor stays.

Jean draws him into a hug, holding him, and he feels warm, like a fire crackling between them. She always makes him feel safe and secure and warm.

When he’s collected himself enough, she hums gently, “Show me the things you’re hiding in here. We don’t have to deal with them, but I want to see them.” Looking at him with a soft smile and a kind eye, she offers, “If you’re comfortable with that.”

Scott doesn’t know what he’d do if he didn’t have Jean in his life.

Nodding slowly, he agrees to the terms. It’s a lot, but maybe with the skeletons shook free, he can focus during training, and that’s a start, if nothing else.

She offers her hand and he holds it, squeezing gently, and she squeezes back.

Leaning against one of the pillars that support the floors above, Scott clears his throat, raising his voice to call, “You can come out! All of you! I want to see you.”   
  
He’s never approached them like this, so he doesn’t know just how many he’ll be able to exhume like this. It’s worth a shot, though, and some is better than none.

They walk the halls, slow and casual, like a night on the boardwalk. Scott isn’t even sure where they’re going just yet, and though it’s his own mindscape, this far down and this upset, it’s hard to find the way out. But the longer they walk, the warmer Jean’s hand feels in his own, and the more familiar everything starts to look.

When they’ve found something they know, the mindscape builds itself a room, not unlike the aesthetic of the rest of the library he’s constructed for himself, nice and neat and everything right where it belongs.

And then they start to come in. 

“Tell me about them, if you can,” Jean instructs, gesturing to the first.

Standing in the balcony a floor up, he’s tall, broad shouldered, almost stoic. Short, neat hair and a presence that demands respect. Scott has a feeling that just seeing them in his mind like this Jean has an understanding, because she can see and know all he does, but he humors her anyway.

“My need to be the face of mutantkind, the cornerstone of our safety. He’s strong willed, physically imposing, just intimidating enough, but he stands with respect, and demands it too. Something between a general and a politician. He knows what to do no matter if he’s talking to journalists and diplomats, or commanding a team.”   
  
“Okay,” Jean says gently, and Scott feels a rush of relief that she doesn’t prod him about it.

He takes a step back and Scott knows that he won’t be a problem for the rest of whatever it is that they’re doing, and he appreciates that.

Everyone else, though, is the problem.

They come out in droves and it makes Scott’s skin crawl, bile crawling up his throat.

Whether it’s something he knows himself, or the reassurance of Jean beside him, he realizes that every construct of himself that shows his face when called, just once, is a fragment of the things he’s locked away that actually  _ wants _ to be healthy and put at ease. Scott would love nothing more than to be rid of half of this, and that’s evident in the turnout.

“How about this one?” Jean asks, gesturing to a pair. One is Scott as he is, maybe a little more battered, but a little stronger too, and the other is himself, but looking not much older than six. Where it seems like they’re holding hands at first, when Jean crouches to smile for the younger Scott, she sees that they’re fused at the wrists, no hands between them. 

“I… When the plane went down, when I was hurt- I didn’t see my brother after that. I felt responsible for not being able to keep him with me, and keep him safe.”   
  
The younger Scott is meant to represent Scott’s brother, though the age difference between the constructs is much more drastic than it is between his real brother, he still sees himself as the elder brother to a young child because that’s how it had been then. They’d only been children.

“Where is he now?” Jean hazards.   
  
“I don’t know. There’s no records, and if there were, his name might be changed.”   
  
She looks at the two of them again before reaching to ruffle the younger’s hair gently and he moves himself to hide behind the elder’s leg, pulling their arms awkwardly. She stands and leaves them be, not wanting to scare them.

“And this one?”

Jean gestures to the Scott who they’d seen in the hall, in the Professor’s wheelchair. Scott doesn’t get the chance to answer, because the construct does it for him.

“His fears he will end up the man I am.”   
  
“The man  _ you are _ , or the man the Professor is,” Jean presses, and though they said they wouldn’t tackle these, when she needles him, Scott doesn’t feel like a bug pinned to a board.

“To him, one in the same.” The Professor Scott looks at him expectantly before continuing, “Scott recognizes the way he’s spoken to, but takes issue with the way others are spoken to. I am his fear of becoming a presence too demanding to deny. A facet of himself with two faces.”

As he says that, he takes on two faces, split down the middle. Jean squeezes his hand as the construct speaks from both mouths, taking turns.

“The face they see, and the face they see.”

Though he says the same thing both times, Scott and Jean understand the underlying difference in both. He means the face the Professor shows to the team, to his peers, and the face that the people see- the face of the man the humans know. They are two faces of the same man, and it scares Scott to think he could split himself so deeply.

There is a Scott who lingers in the back who Jean keeps glancing at, and Scott doesn’t want to look at him either, really. He reminds him of a lot of things he wishes he could forget. The man is himself, as they all are, but his skin shimmers with a billion facets, shining like a polished diamond in the light.

_ “You could.” _   
  
Turning his head to the direction of the sound, he doesn’t see anyone or anything that had spoken, and it had been a voice he didn’t recognize. He squeezes Jean’s hand as his chest starts to rise and fall a little faster. Jean squeezes back and it draws Scott’s attention back to her.

“Are you alright?”

He stares at her for a long moment before licking his lips quickly, “It’s nothing. It’s… just a lot all at once.”   
  
“Do you want to stop?”

Drawing a deep breath, he looks over the handful of constructs and thinks. He thinks hard. All of this is difficult, and this isn’t even the core of it all. They’re all still here, waiting, watching, and holding onto the things he himself doesn’t know how to deal with.

Jean lifts her hands to his chest and almost digs her fingers in, like she’s trying to cage something down, “Scott.”

He doesn’t know what she’s doing, but he’s torn between her, and looking at all these streaks of red staring him down, blurring like lights through a wet windshield. They feel suffocating.

When he finally does look down at what she’s doing, he realizes there’s a hole in his chest, chipped and pulling at the edges. Scott feels hollow. With all of these parts of him quarantined off, separated from himself, he doesn’t know if it means he’s not much of anything anymore without them. And his mind rationalizes that thought with a growing emptiness.

Scott puts his hands over Jean’s and he catches her eye when she looks at him and he breathes, in and out, slow and even, as best he can, and the hole forming starts to close. He knows he’s not well, and these things are all visceral reminders he can’t imagine showing anyone but her. And she cares for him so much and so deeply. There’s a guilt there, too, that she has to take care of him when it’s his job to take care of her, the team, and all of mutantkind, but he knows that if he doesn’t learn- if he doesn’t start to deal with all of this- he’s going to end up a sad and hollow creature.

For all the love she has, and he has, Scott doesn’t want Jean to have to love an empty man.

“I’m sorry,” he says gently. “You take such good care of me, and I don’t want it to feel like a chore. I can’t ever say how grateful I am for you, and how you see me.” He holds her hands gently and Jean shuts her eyes hard, “You  _ see me _ , Jean.”

When she opens her eyes, relief floods her as she sees that under their hands, that echoing void in his chest is gone. She looks up at him, brows knit.

“I see you, Scott. You are seen. I can’t make all of this go away,” she hazards a glance at the Scotts still standing in a semi-circle around them, “But, I can stand right here, beside you, and help you deal with them. Help you learn them. I can help  _ you _ see  _ them _ like I see you. They are as much you as you are. They need to be seen.”

Scott follows her eyes to look at them all, and none of them have really moved. They wait, expectantly, because it’s still the same. At the end of the day and when all is said and done, Scott wants to get better and  _ be  _ better. It’s not going to be easy, and he doesn’t expect it to happen overnight, but he knows that he needs to get better to  _ do _ better, too. But more importantly than that, he needs to get better to be healthy and happy and feel safe in his own mind.

“I think… I think I’ve had enough for today, Jean,” Scott relents, shoulders still stiff.   
  
As he says that, the constructs start to move and shuffle out, retreating back into the endless maze of his mind just past the beautiful library.

Jean looks to him and smiles, “I’m proud of you, you know.”   
  
He huffs a laugh half turning to lead them back towards the intricate doors to the steps outside and out of his mind, “Is that so?”   
  
“Of course! You should be proud, too.”   
  
Scott hum, squeezing her hand again gently, “I think I am.”

She leans her head on his shoulder gently before turning her face to kiss his cheek. As the mindscape starts to unravel and fall away, one last Scott watches the two of them take the steps down in front of the library from the window on the upper floor. Dark eyes and a brilliant red diamond set in the middle of his forehead glint. His eyes are a flat red, and he doesn’t wear a visor, but the scowl on his lips says more than enough about what he thinks of the two of them trying to tackle helping Scott cope.

Neither sees him, but Jean feels the prickle of his eyes on the back of her head. Before she has a chance to look, the world comes into vision around them, the dim light of the lamp and the quiet sound of her own and Scott’s breathing.

Pulling away from their easy contact, she flexes her hands from where they’ve been cupping his face and relaxes enough to settle in beside him on the bed and set her head back on his shoulder.

There’s nothing to say just yet, but they will, with time. One step is progress.

#

“Jean! I’m with you!! I’m here! Please!” 

Scott screams against the wind, the storm, the torrents of fire that streak across the sky in brilliant wings. A terrible power flares angry and righteous, shaking the world to its core.

“I see you, Jean! I love you!”

His words may fall on deaf ears, but his stubbornness, his determination, and his conviction to stand his ground and fight and  _ love _ is heard loud and clear.


End file.
